Scuderia Coloni Silverstone Race 1 Report

Silverstone Circuit

CHANGEABLE WEATHER LEADS TO A DIFFICULT RACE 1 FOR SCUDERIA COLONI IN SILVERSTONE

English weather proved itself again in Silverstone, making a deep influence also on the first race of the GP2 weekend. Kevin Ceccon and Michael Herck finished in P20 and P24 respectively, after that the race was delayed by 15 minutes due to a strong rain shower and that this forced Race Direction to opt for a start under Safety-Car.

Michael Herck

Photo by: GP2 Media Service

In such treacherous conditions, Michael Herck’s race got immediately complicated when the Romanian driver, who was starting from P14, stalled on the grid. He was pushed in the pit-lane and managed to start from there, but the price for that was a nearly one-lap gap on the rest of the group, something that virtually ended his race.

In the meantime, Ceccon’s first laps were good, the Italian driver gaining one place on Filippi immediately at the restart. Anyway it was soon clear that stuck in the middle of the pack Ceccon would have never found the pace for a recovery, so the team tried a risky strategy, calling him in the pits on lap 6 for a fresh set of rain tyres. It could have been a winning move if rain was starting again, something that seemed likely at the time but in the end didn’t happen. Kevin had a very good pace and in a few laps he had already made up for all the time he had lost in the pit-stop, and passed Fauzy on lap 10. Anyway, on lap 15 he had to stop to get slick tyres, and this meant a P20 finish for him.

The Italian boasted a remarkable performance anyway, and his laptimes progression on slicks shows that he’s already at ease in Silverstone.

Paolo Coloni: “With Ceccon we tried a risky call and it went wrong. We had to try something special to get him out of the bunch, and as the weather has been very changeable for the whole weekend we thought that sticking to rain tyres could have been the right move. It wasn’t and I’m sorry for Kevin, who did a staggering job. On slick he was amazing, at one point of the race his pace was quicker than the leaders’, it’s really impressive if you bear in mind that until yesterday he had never seen Silverstone before…
Michael did a mistake at the start and this ruined his race, he was really sorry at the end. Tomorrow we’ll do our best to give our drivers some chances to recover”.